And yes Norwegian Girl, in case you are wondering: yes, your review is the first for this fic, although quite a few people have put it on their favourite stories and story alert lists, so if you love it, I suggest you do the same! -|:{P (the happy moustachioed Frenchman!)
Like I always say now, if you have any questions, then please just leave a review, and I can get back to you! So SEE YA and ENJOY!!!
Chapter IV
Back in his office, and with all thoughts of clinic duty conveniently forgotten, House sat at his cushioned leather swivel chair, rubbing at his throat in earnest with one hand and feeding himself vicodin after vicodin with the other. Drs Chase and Foreman sat in their respective seats around the table, the wound at Foreman's temple held together with little butterfly stitches, while Dr Cameron stood next to the wipe board, her weight predominately on her left leg and her arms crossed in exasperation. In actual fact, she was just frustrated over the fact that a seriously mentally ill foreigner was actually permitted 20 minutes free-reign in which to cause enough havoc to effectively back-track the meticulously thought out hospital system.
For the several minutes while House continued his reiki-style relaxation ritual, a stiff silence dragged on, pronounced even more by the loud ticking of the clock, and the occasional cough.
"So?" asked Chase, wiping boredom-borne sweat from his forehead. After the frantic calling from House to his office, he'd expected a situation that was a little more drastic.
"So what?" asked House, clearly enjoying this sadistic feeling of letting his employees stew in his torturous atmosphere.
"So why did you call us in here? What was the panic?" Foreman asked, "One minute you're calling us in like it's something really important, the next, you're relaxing on your chair like you're having the freaking time of your life!"
"Well," said House, "There was the fact I'd just been strangled half way to cuckoo-land, but then I just realised that I'd put the guy there already myself, and booked him in for…say…" his looked at his watch at this point, "2 hours, 15 minutes and 35 seconds before he gets back. And also, if the scene back there and my awesome theme tune wasn't enough to tell you, we've got a new patient!"
"At least he's not got a concussion…" muttered Cameron, sighing.
"His ego still blankets the whole of New Jersey…" Chase finished, his head sinking into his hands, his elbows resting on the table in blatant fatigue.
"Now that you cleared up the diagnosis of my completely healthy mind-"
"Not speaking too soon of course…" interjected Cameron, half to herself.
"What do we know about our dear little hyena boy?" Lifting his cane from its resting position on the table, he lifted it up, pointing it dramatically at Chase, "Chase, if you could please do the honours!"
"Right," said the surgeon, taking a red folder off the table and opening it up, "According to the medical file that his mother and father left at the Nurses' station before the commotion, our guy is 18 years old, Japanese, and goes by the name of…" Chase paused for a moment, his blond eyebrows raising half-way off his forehead, unsure as to whether he'd read the information right, or if he too had acquired a concussion.
"So?" asked House, impatient as always, "What's his name? I swear, if you don't give me a name, I'll have to call him 'Pookie', and no one wants that!"
Suddenly, Chase burst out laughing, dropping the file and gripping his sides; he just couldn't help himself.
"Hey! I was being serious about the 'Pookie' thing, you know!"
"N-n-no," stammered out Chase, still sniggering, "it's not that. Please, just read it out before I get a heart attack!" House, in his conventional frustration, snatched up the file, and read the top bar in silence, taking another pill as he did so. He was half way through the act of swallowing, before he stopped, began to choke, and dropped the file again, coughing and wheezing. Of course, considering his past and present nature, no one offered to pat his back.
"Oh. My. God!" he wheezed, laughing hysterically, finally recovering from the fit. "You'll never guess what his parents were smoking before he was born!"
"Why?" asked Cameron, her arms no longer folded, "What has that got to do with anything?"
"Well," began Chase, filling in for House as he began laughing again, "you'll see, when you learn the kid's name is – get this – Light. Yagami!"
"Oh. My. God! Ow…" said Foreman, hitting his head on the table in his sniggering fit.
Cameron however, didn't laugh. She just shook her head at the laughing trio, glaring at them with her usual poisonous stare when the others laughed or otherwise made fun of something that she found morally bad to do so.
"Oh come on!" said House, finally noticing his female employee's volunteered vigil. "How is that not funny? This kid is Japanese, and has a name that so stupid, even Western parents won't touch it, and they're usually doped up on some sort of crap! No wonder he's crazy! He probably even hates his parents to boot!"
"I just don't think it's funny, that's all." Cameron replied, her tone more casual that her look.
"Why?" asked Foreman, trying not to laugh, "Is it morally wrong to laugh at a person's name? I know you used to laugh at House's name back when we all first met him!"
"She did?" asked House in mock shock. In reality, he didn't care, as he'd heard all the jokes before, and mainly from Wilson, "If that's how grateful you are, I'm gonna ban you use of my wipe board markers, so scootch away from them now!"
"You never let me use them anyway!"
"And I can see now I was right to do so. Next thing I know, you'll graffiti-ing on it, and commenting on the size of my weenie!"
"Fine…" Cameron moved away from the wipe board, instead sitting on the table with one leg crossed over the other, as her seat had mysteriously disappeared (hence the reason she was standing by the wipe board in the first place).
"As I was saying," she continued, now comfortable with her piece of the table, "I just don't think it's funny because it's just too ironic and fitting for a guy who likens himself to a saviour and has a bigger god-complex than House. Besides, a saviour can be described as a 'light' and it's probably a -"
"Can you please stop talking like I'm not here? I know that's what you want but your wish hasn't come true just yet!" Everyone, of course, ignored that. "Anyway, how can a stranger have a bigger god-complex than me, I'm so much more fitting to be a god: I can grow a beard for one!"
"He may not have beard potential," answered Chase, "but he's already killed one bad guy, maybe more: Even you should know that's what good gods apparently 'do'."
"I'm still cooler." He muttered, mainly to himself.
"If we can all get back the person in question," said a voice from one side of the room, "you'll realise that the situation is a lot more dire than you first thought." At this, House, Chase, Foreman and Cameron followed the direction of the voice, to see a strange man couching crow-like on chair in the shadows: a remarkable thing in itself, as the walls were mainly glass save one or two, and he looked more out of place than a penguin in Africa.
Scared and surprised, House lifted his cane again, this time pointing it at the man, "It's you!" he yelled, "From the elevator! I'd recognise those baggy pants and Nike cap anywhere!" The man in question was indeed wearing the pink Nike cap and baggy pants, but what also made him so distinguishable was that he was also wearing a loose white long-sleeved shirt, and a mask that covered his whole face. The mask itself was reminiscent of a Western stereotypical, almost bordering racial depiction of Jackie Chan. His posture was terrible, with an almost 90 degree slouch, and the way he sat was like a crow alighting on a horizontal post, especially with his pale bare feet (possibly caused by generalized dystonia? House couldn't help thinking). The only thing that could be seen from beneath the cap and mask was a nest of black, straight, unkempt hair that was almost level with his shoulders.
If it wasn't the appearance that shocked the group, it would definitely have been his blunt and downright bold attitude: to even have the notion to think it okay to go into a Doctor of Diagnostic Medicine's office – nay, a hospital – dressed that way, and with such a manner like he owned the place! In that respect, he'd already surpassed House, never mind Cuddy (who actually did run the place).
"If you could please excuse the outfit and such: I am actually trying to help you do your jobs and complete mine at once, and the staring is exceptionally off-putting." His tone was strange and ambivalent: both haughty and welcoming; harsh and soft; like a English gentleman, in the way it reached out a hand, while at the same time reminding you of your place.
"Okay…" said Cameron, trying to understand but failing, "So what makes you think that you are in any way connected to our patient? The only coincidence you share with him is that you were on the scene at the same time he had a major manic episode."
"Actually," he said, putting up an erudite finger, "I am a detective who worked on the Kira case that was solved 2 months ago, so, hearing that there was a young man out there who was claiming to be the successor to that Kira, I felt compelled to investigate. What is more, his father Soichiro Yagami is Chief Detective at the NPA in Japan, who's job it was to solve the case, and whose son – this very same patient – helped solve the case with us before his untimely illness. In short, Light Yagami is my colleague, my other colleague's son, and my fellow in intelligence and familiarity: my best friend."
The Diagnostic team just glared in incomprehension, House staring at the man like he himself was crazy, while Chase stared down at his fingers, trying to see if the new information would make more sense if he counted each relation on his finger, like a child would count the 'greats' of a distant relation on his fingers, in the hopes of greater understanding.
"Also," the man continued, as if this had already sunk in, "I am here on another matter, which involves the surveillance of one Doctor Gregory House over the matter of a missing shipment of Vicodin pills. As this is his office, and you are the oldest member here, could I assume that is you…" the faceless man pointed a pale, thin finger at House, before walking up to him and taking his bottle of pain medication out of his fright-frozen hand. "Mr…Vladimir Kolinsky?"
House snatched the precious bottle back from the man, and placed it in his safely guarded jacket pocket, before giving him a warning look. "That man was dead before I borrowed the meds!"
"Wait," asked Foreman, "so Light Yagami and Cuddy weren't kidding about that? I thought that was just a stupid excuse made by this sorry excuse of a fan fiction author, so that he-slash-she had a narrative vehicle to give this nonsensical story what little sense could be had!"
"Yes," muttered House, "I thought so too…" he rubbed his stubbled chin thoughtfully, as though that would make his presence that much more meaningful to the story (A/N: *snort* as if!).
"How could you even think about doing that?" asked Cameron, in shock and outrage (everyone seems shocked today).
"Just as I was about to say-" mentioned the faceless man, before being interrupted once again.
"You're the one who took them! You're not allowed an opinion on this!"
"IF WE COULD ALL JUST BE QUIET AND STOP FOMULATING INCORRECT PRIORITIES!!!" yelled the faceless man, his shoulders heaving after the large breath he took to shout that mouthful. "We," he said, now calmer, " – particularly I – are here to solve the mysterious cases of the New Kira and the Missing Vicodin Pills, one of which seems to have been solved already. For the other, I will need your skills and cooperation, as the patient in question seems to be a danger to both himself and others, and the condition he suffers from has already gone undiagnosed despite 6 months of immersion in nothing but professional medical care. If you will keep your mouths shut further," he said, for House was on the verge of interrupting, "you may call me Ryuzaki, as I am tired of being referred to all the time as 'the faceless man'. If that is too difficult for you Americans to pronounce even remotely correctly, 'Ryan' will do nicely. You are now allowed to speak."
"Fine," said House, pretending to dust himself off, after that unprecedented telling off, "Poirrot it is!"
***
The world around him swirled pitch black, deep foreboding colours occasionally swimming into view. Like sharp samurai-swords, their ripples of coloured light occasionally sliced through his minds eye, showing images of human suffering through the slit-like wounds, clear light shimmering along the edges, never letting him turn away, never letting him forget: the reasons he could never give up, the reasons he carried on with this futile crusade, the reason he had to be, no, the reason he was Kira, and couldn't be anyone else: not the successful student to his teachers, not the insightful amateur detective to the NPA, not even the perfect, golden son to his parents.
That charade had broken down many moons ago, but not before it had chance to dupe everyone he met. Had he not have been such a good actor, the blow generated by his sudden illness would have been much less, and his parents would have understood completely having witnessed the beginning of such a breakdown firsthand, rather than, conversely bursting into tears from the shock, from the sheer ignorance and disbelief that their perfect, beautiful, intelligent son had the capability – no the mental corruption – to commit such a deed, make such threats and instil such fear upon greater men, making them fear for their lives.
For them…Mom… Dad… Sayu… Light thought, his mind halfway between waking and dreaming, it must've been like a kick in the teeth.
Slowly, and mournfully, Light awoke from the compulsory slumber, a sharp pain on the right side of his face jolting as he frowned away the tiredness that still shrouded his mind, for until now he had never felt it with such strength.
Why does my head hurt? I was in the wheelchair until a moment ago, right? Did I fall out of it, like at the last institution?
The lesion on his face itched wickedly after nearly an hour of being ignored, intent on punishing the teen for sleeping away the worst of the pain, and so Light lifted up a hand to scratch it – a foolish practice, he knew, considering the good it would do him – yet he couldn't: it was stuck by his side, as though stripped into position on the opposite flank. Looking down, Light sighed and shook his head in annoyance, "Should have known." He wheezed, finally using his voice after what felt like centuries of abusive conduct on his part, "I must've really done something bad to deserve this…or maybe they've accounted for the behaviour at the last institution?"
Light was fastened into a white strait jacket, his arms strapped to opposing sides via long sleeves connected to a brown belt and buckle that encircled the waist. Apart from that, there were the same style belts around the neck, chest and hips, holding him in tight. He tried to sit up properly, but thanks to his ankles being tied to the white bars on either side of the bed, that job was admittedly difficult. It was obvious now that the magnitude of whatever he did must have been seriously bad enough that they didn't want him moving freely – or at all, really.
What are ya gonna do now, Light? At this, Light looked over to his left, to see Ryuk standing there, a like black-rimmed grin on his pale face, reminiscent of the Late Ledger's Joker. They've got ya tied up like a rabbit, as always, but the glass thing is new: are you gonna sit quietly since you know you'll be spotted, or are you foolish enough to actually break out?
Looking around him, he realised that he was in a separate hospital room, surrounded by three plain walls, and a fourth of clear glass: of course, they must not want to take chances with me. All the standard hospital furnishings were present, along with a travel bag laying open on a chair, no doubt full to the brim of Light's clothes, toiletries, and a number of books (in both Japanese and English) that he'd collected on his travels from hospital to hospital. Two plastic cups of tea sat on the bedside table on his left, the dark brew still steaming: evidently, his parents and Sayu had only been gone for a few minutes at most, believing him safely knocked out enough that a few minutes away wouldn't do any harm.
"No," Light replied, giving Ryuk one of his million-dollar smiles, "I'll escape: I've got to live up to this country's expectation of me, you know. Besides, Mom and Dad like taking their sweet time at times like this."
With that, he bent his back over, letting his head touch the mattress between his legs, and began to shiver inside the jacket. Thankfully, Light had lost a little weight since the last time he was wearing one of these, and his parents had presumably made sure he was given the same size jacket.
Ever since Light was first made to wear a straitjacket back in June when he first became ill and strangled the invigilator, Light had been allowed 6 months in which to learn how to get out of these things, as he was always made to wear one at every hospital – as his condition was largely undiagnosed, and Light's treatment of the staff was always threatening at best, they just didn't know what else to do with him, as Soichiro and Sachiko wouldn't allow anything more severe. Now, 6 months on and 52 straitjackets later, Light's skill in the art of escapism was almost on level with the Great Houdini himself, and so it had been barely five minutes when Light was out of the jacket and undoing the knots around his ankles.
Once free, he stepped lightly off the bed and began changing out of the standard green hospital-grade gown, replacing it instead with his favourite beige-y coloured trousers and black and white sweater, slipping his house slippers over his bare feet. Once happy with his appearance, he began rummaging through the bag again, taking out instead an A5 size blue notepad and a HB pencil – both of which were bought when Light was at a mental hospital in Florida where he was treated by a neurologist who had a penchant for molesting his patients, the knowledge of which had affected Light so greatly that he couldn't physically speak until he'd been transferred somewhere else in an entirely different state.
Placing the notepad on the bedside table, he quickly wrote down two notes onto the first clear page: one in Japanese for his family, and the second in English for any doctors or nurses that might come in. And, satisfied with the current situation, Light opened the siding glass door, and walked out of the room, hands in pockets and a smile on his face: the epitome of Masked Serenity. Looking over his shoulder at the lone shinigami, and hovering in the doorway, Light gave him a little wink, saying, "Stay right there, Ryuk: It'll be strange if I'm walking around talking to you. Unlike with you, others can hear me speak."
Suit yourself, Light. See if I care. He then proceeded to take an apple from a separate compartment in Light's bag, stuffing it inside his mouth and chewing it down in one gulp.
That's my shinigami.
And continuing to walk out, Light didn't look back, only stopping momentarily to allow the passage of a full white body bag on a gurney, no doubt to be wheeled out the way they first came in. Then, once it had passed safely away, no one did or said anything as he climbed into an empty lift, a small laugh of his echoing around the small space as the lift doors closed.
So, what do you think? As you can see, I decided that the short chapters I've been giving you weren't generous enough, and I felt like I was being stingy, so I decided to give you all a large helping, to be nice! Plus, I did need to sort a few things out and confirm the involvement of the Yagami family (and particularly Light) and Ryuzaki, which is why I've made it longer.
So, please stay tuned for the next chapter because, with any luck, I may have it up before I go away for two weeks and leave you all for a while. The last time I did this, admittedly, I got really behind on my schedule, and I ended up not doing as much on my stories as I wanted, hence all the bad progress with them all, for which I apologise profusely.
Ah well, that's enough from me, so please R&R and SEE YA!!!